12.01.2025

A mild winter. I was never that guy before, never a snow hater, always liked the excuse to stay indoors with books and games and quiet. I liked my evening walks in Traverse City where you have to bundle up and cover your eyes sometimes like you're about to jump out of an airlock into space. The almost total absence of noise.

But going to Montreal from there in January has officially put me off the stuff. So much snow for the first few weeks I may as well have rented a yurt in Nunavut.

The trucks and plows were running 24/7 but they have rules there to protect workers and the mayor was on tv going 'we're doing as much as we can but these guys have to sleep too.'

Relying on cars to wear treadmarks into the ice so you had somewhere to walk. Having nowhere to go if one was coming at you, having to squeeze up against a berm between a Citroen and a Fiat until they trundled past.

Those were the conditions I started Without a Gun in. Sitting in a stranger's kitchen in a technically foreign country while the white stuff piled up eyeball height. Wondering if I'd see America again and if I even cared.